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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Richardson hails ‘awesome’ captain Powell, says Scorpions ‘built to win

by

Sports Desk
819 days ago
20221123
Jamaica Scorpians Rovman Powell.

Jamaica Scorpians Rovman Powell.

ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Ja­maica Scor­pi­ons head coach An­drew Richard­son has de­scribed team cap­tain Rov­man Pow­ell as an “awe­some” leader, and be­lieves his per­for­mance in the re­cent­ly staged Su­per50 Cup was ev­i­dence of the per­son­al in­vest­ment in his de­vel­op­ment.

Pow­ell im­pressed both with his form and his cap­tain­cy as Scor­pi­ons bounced back from a shaky start to the tour­na­ment to beat de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons and favourites Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Force in last Sat­ur­day’s fi­nal, and lift their first re­gion­al one-day ti­tle in 11 years.

He led his side’s bat­ting with 346 runs at an av­er­age of 69 with one hun­dred – a bril­liant un­beat­en 105 in the se­mi-fi­nal which spear­head­ed a tour­na­ment-high run chase of 318 to stun Guyana Harpy Ea­gles.

“[He’s] awe­some­ness, [he’s] awe­some­ness,” Richard­son said.

“Rovy (Pow­ell), the way he op­er­ates you can tell he wants to take his game to the next lev­el. The way he mar­shalls the troops on the field was awe­some to see.

“Every time he bat­ted, he bat­ted with a pur­pose. I cer­tain­ly know – es­pe­cial­ly [in the fi­nal] – he want­ed to be there at the end but un­for­tu­nate­ly it didn’t go ac­cord­ing to plan.”

He con­tin­ued: “He is one of the crick­eters that I can tell you has per­son­al­ly in­vest­ed in his game and his im­prove­ment, and this is just fruits of his labour.”

The 29-year-old, West In­dies’ Twen­ty20 vice-cap­tain at the re­cent World Cup in Aus­tralia, al­so tast­ed suc­cess two months ago when he over­saw Ja­maica Tallawahs’ cap­ture of the Caribbean Pre­mier League.

Pow­ell, who made his in­ter­na­tion­al de­but six years ago, has played 45 One-Day In­ter­na­tion­als and 55 T20 In­ter­na­tion­als.

He was one of sev­er­al play­ers with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence in the suc­cess­ful Scor­pi­ons side, cam­paign­ing along­side cur­rent Windies stars Shel­don Cot­trell, Bran­don King and Odean Smith, and for­mer play­ers like Chad­wick Wal­ton and An­dre Mc­Carthy.

And Richard­son be­lieves the ex­pe­ri­ence in the unit meant Scor­pi­ons were “built to win”, de­spite the stum­bles ear­ly in the tour­na­ment when they lost two of their first three match­es – in­clud­ing one to min­nows West In­dies Acad­e­my.

“We had some colour­ful words to get the guys mo­ti­vat­ed again [fol­low­ing that de­feat],” Richard­son said.

“From the in­cep­tion, we said that this team was built to win. This team has got a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence and I thank the se­lec­tors for back­ing us to go with the ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers.

“We had some bumps in the road. We didn’t start out the com­pe­ti­tion chas­ing well so we had to re­vis­it our plans and then we start­ed bat­ting first, the bat­ters start­ed get­ting con­fi­dence and I al­ways be­lieve in this com­pe­ti­tion – and in re­gion­al crick­et – the team that bats con­sis­tent­ly well will do well.”

Richard­son, who played the bulk of his 68 first class match­es for his na­tive Ja­maica, al­so hailed the Scor­pi­ons bowl­ing at­tack led by pac­ers Smith and Nichol­son Gor­don (15 wick­ets apiece) and 35-year-old left-arm spin­ner Den­nis Bul­li (14).

“The bowl­ing has been con­sis­tent for Ja­maica for years and it was true to form in this com­pe­ti­tion,” he point­ed out.

“It was good to see guys like Bul­li putting their hands up. Nichol­son Gor­don has been get­ting wick­ets right through in all for­mats and it was good to see a col­lec­tive bowl­ing unit backed up by some sen­si­ble bat­ting, es­pe­cial­ly the game in the se­mi-fi­nals.

“That was a big one for us, that one gave us the re­al con­fi­dence boost that we need­ed.”

He added: “We haven’t won a re­gion­al tro­phy in quite a lit­tle while. This is a very good feel­ing.”

CMC


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